Good evening, my love.
This may come as a shock to you. After all, here you are, sitting looking at your computer screen, and suddenly these words of mine come scrolling past.
What I want you to do is simple – don’t flinch, don’t push yourself away, don’t scream for help. Sit back, and listen.
It’s high time you realised that I’m dead and I’m not going to come back; that I no longer have any existence in any real terms but in your memory. Yes, even these words are being put up by a computer programme I’d installed – it is not I who is writing this, because there is no longer an I.
I know that my death was a shock to you. I did not mean it to be, but you chose to ignore the hints I kept dropping. I had known for some months that I was terminally ill, and I knew the last months would be bad. Bad, and not just for me, but for you. And because I loved – because I still love you, the “I” who is writing this while I am still alive and you are out shopping – this “I”, as i said, chooses to relieve you of this pain.
No, I do not intend you to grieve for me. But your grief is natural and will pass in time. Grief always does, even if in the first months you will react as though a knife is being twisted in a wound each time you see something that reminds you of me. I cannot tell you not to grieve, but i know that in time you’ll be better. And you will have the memories.
Do you remember the time we walked hand in hand, laughing? And how you had bought street food from the vendor, and how I’d refused to eat it and claimed I could see the bacteria crawling in it? I wonder if you still have the photo I took of that mass of spice-laden stuff in its paper wrapper. I didn’t ask you, but I’m sure you do, somehow. And I do know you remember that day.
As I sit writing this, I only have to turn my head and see the books on my shelf, and among them are the books that we bought together that day, old now, the pages yellow, but still treasured, and re-read. Do you remember bargaining over the bag you bought, and how happy you were at driving down the price?
Remember the first time we made love together, and how you lay afterwards with your head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat? Put your hand to your ear, and listen to your heart, for that is my heart as well, beating with yours.
Remember those happy times, and know this – I’m within you, in your memory, and that as long as you live, that memory will never die. And that is the life that is still open to me – your memory, my life, your life, for ever and the years that are left to you, you and I, one in each other, as you choose me to be, on into the sunset. Wipe away those tears and remember your ice-cream that I ate, and left nothing for you, nothing at all.
And I can see you now, smiling.
This may come as a shock to you. After all, here you are, sitting looking at your computer screen, and suddenly these words of mine come scrolling past.
What I want you to do is simple – don’t flinch, don’t push yourself away, don’t scream for help. Sit back, and listen.
It’s high time you realised that I’m dead and I’m not going to come back; that I no longer have any existence in any real terms but in your memory. Yes, even these words are being put up by a computer programme I’d installed – it is not I who is writing this, because there is no longer an I.
I know that my death was a shock to you. I did not mean it to be, but you chose to ignore the hints I kept dropping. I had known for some months that I was terminally ill, and I knew the last months would be bad. Bad, and not just for me, but for you. And because I loved – because I still love you, the “I” who is writing this while I am still alive and you are out shopping – this “I”, as i said, chooses to relieve you of this pain.
No, I do not intend you to grieve for me. But your grief is natural and will pass in time. Grief always does, even if in the first months you will react as though a knife is being twisted in a wound each time you see something that reminds you of me. I cannot tell you not to grieve, but i know that in time you’ll be better. And you will have the memories.
Do you remember the time we walked hand in hand, laughing? And how you had bought street food from the vendor, and how I’d refused to eat it and claimed I could see the bacteria crawling in it? I wonder if you still have the photo I took of that mass of spice-laden stuff in its paper wrapper. I didn’t ask you, but I’m sure you do, somehow. And I do know you remember that day.
As I sit writing this, I only have to turn my head and see the books on my shelf, and among them are the books that we bought together that day, old now, the pages yellow, but still treasured, and re-read. Do you remember bargaining over the bag you bought, and how happy you were at driving down the price?
Remember the first time we made love together, and how you lay afterwards with your head on my chest, listening to my heartbeat? Put your hand to your ear, and listen to your heart, for that is my heart as well, beating with yours.
Remember those happy times, and know this – I’m within you, in your memory, and that as long as you live, that memory will never die. And that is the life that is still open to me – your memory, my life, your life, for ever and the years that are left to you, you and I, one in each other, as you choose me to be, on into the sunset. Wipe away those tears and remember your ice-cream that I ate, and left nothing for you, nothing at all.
And I can see you now, smiling.
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